The Haunted Mask vs The Living Dummy
by Jumpinsoraa
Summary: Her eyes moved down to the dummy in her arms. It was a male dressed in a formal-double breasted suit over a white colored shirt and a red bow tie. He had red painted lips and wavy orange hair.  His round-lifeless eyes appeared to be staring right back...


**Title:** The Haunted Mask vs. The Living Dummy

**Author:** Jumpinsoraa

**Rating:** T

**Author's Note:** This is a remake. I don't own Goosebumps.

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>: I'm Slappy

**7: 45pm Sunday-Walnut Avenue**

A thin-blond headed girl stood near an art shop, holding what looked like a small child, but in reality, was a wooden dummy. The slight breeze flapped her long charcoal-colored jacket, minuscule amounts of rain droplets sprinkled against it. The murky sky above her head held no comfort for her; in fact, it only made her feel worse.

A pixie-faced girl, Carly Beth Caldwell, walked out of the art shop with a plastic bag full of recently purchased art supplies. Her long-brown hair was hidden under her parka's hood. The young girl's mother, Mrs. Caldwell sent her to the store to buy new paint brushes. Why? Her younger brother, Noah, and his hyperactive buddies had wrecked them all during a rough game of "Lightsaber Battles", their favorite pastime.

"I'm done." Carly Beth sighed, the cold wind blowing in her flushed face.  
>"Little kids – You can't live with them."<p>

Carly Beth paused; she turned her gaze to the forlorn figure. The seemingly fresh-bulging bruises on the girl's left temple alarmed her.

"Um…are you okay?" Carle Beth asked as she walked up to the girl.

"W-who are y-you?" she gasped, hunching her broad shoulders, her watery blue eyes darting side to side as if she were to find a good escape route.

_Strange, I wonder what she's so afraid of. Why is she holding a dummy? _

"Please calm down, I won't bite. My name is Carly Beth. What's yours?" she asked, softly. Scaring the girl wasn't on her list of things to do; patience and a soft tone of voice was the key to comforting a frightened person.

The girl's arms shook.

"I…uh…I…" she was clearly having difficulties answering her question.

The words were jammed in her throat.

"I'm…uh…Alexia. Hello, Carly Beth." she answered, her chapped lips trembled as they parted, and sweat gleamed down her forehead.

Alexia froze in place for about a moment, her fearful expression had softened. It was neutral now. It concealed her troubled emotions from Carly Beth.

"I'm sorry." Alexia said.

"Sorry? For what?" Carly Beth asked with a confused expression.

Suddenly, Alexia whipped toward Carly Beth and threw the dummy straight at her!

"Whoa!" Carly Beth raised her arms, catching Alexia's dummy before it hit the rough pavement.

Alexia broke into a sprint and fled, leaving Carly Beth with the dummy.

"Well, that was certainly strange." she commented.

Her eyes moved down to the dummy in her arms. It was a male dressed in a formal-double breasted suit over a white colored shirt and a red bow tie. He had red painted lips and wavy orange hair. His round-lifeless eyes appeared to be staring right back at her.

"Hello there. It's a good thing I caught you in time, right?"

She didn't find his eerie smile appealing, she couldn't. It brought back old memories of her encounter with the Haunted Mask; a sickening face that had tried to turn her evil. It had all started on the day her so-called "friends"– Chuck and Steve – snuck a long, plump worm into her sandwich. The poor young girl, unaware of their trickery, took a bite out of it – and the worm! Her classmate's laughter rang in her ears, fueling her rage. Enough was enough! They had to be a taught a lesson they would not soon forget.

After her embarrassing predicament, her search for a terrifying mask brought to small party store located on her block. A party store where this mysterious man in a trailing cape had been selling Halloween masks. The place where she met and bought the sick mask she used to scare the bullies silly.

Her mask had been a total success. It made her greatest desire come true. It helped her ascend from her scaredy-cat status for the first time in her life! However, her victory had been short lived. She eventually found out the truth about her prized mask…

It was a real face! A real face that wanted to fill her with its raging evil. A real face that would stop at nothing to become a part of her.

Eventually though, Carly Beth defeated it with a symbol of love, which was her mother's Plaster of Paris head. The sculpted head that looked exactly like her, the real Carly Beth.

She locked the Haunted Mask away in a metallic trunk so it would break free on the next Halloween and hunt her down. It was now trapped underneath several boxes in her damp, spider-web-covered basement.

_Where it will hopefully remain stuck there, forever._

Carly Beth tore her eyes away from her new dummy and headed for her house.

...

"Hey, Carly Beth! What's that thing in your arms?" Noah asked, pointing at the dummy. His eyes gleamed with childish curiosity.

She bent down and perched the dummy on her leg.

"This is a dummy, Noah. It's a puppet ventriloquist use to entertain people." Carly Beth explained, working the dummy's controls, making its eye brows rise and fall.

Noah giggled.

"What?" she asked him. Her smile changed into an annoyed frown.

She felt his witty joke coming.

_I'm ready for you this time, bro. Let's see what you've got._

"The dummy is prettier than you, Carly Beth!" Noah said, letting his irritating chipmunk laugh burst out of his gullet.

She rolled her eyes.

"Ha-ha. That was so funny I forgot to fall, no really, I mean it." she said in a sarcastic tone.

Carly Beth walked past Noah and walked up to her room where she took off her clothes and switched into her tiger pajamas.

"It's bed time." she yawned, stretching her arms.

She placed the dummy on her desk. She suddenly noticed a wrinkled piece of paper tucked in his suit pocket.

"What's this?" Carly Beth asked, removing the piece of paper from the dummy's pocket.

She unfolded the wrinkled paper and read its contents.

"Hello, my name is Slappy. Read the words under my name and become my friend. We'll have a swell time together."

Her eyes moved down to the foreign words on the paper. She scrunched her forehead in concentration.

_Karru Marri Odanna Loma Molonu Karrano?" _

She didn't see Slappy blink twice.

Carly Beth shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh, well." she put the paper back in his pocket and jumped onto her bed, covering herself with her fluffy blankets. "Good night, Slappy." she turned off the lamp.

Darkness engulfed the room.

_Creak. _

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><p><em><strong>Please review!<strong>_


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